Also, the cutest. There are little flocks of them in the upper waters of Channel Islands Harbor right now. They’re only here for a little while, just waiting warmer weather to continue their migration to their breeding grounds in Alaska.
You’ll see them in protected waters in fairly large groups. They are tiny birds, about the size of a capon and will lift off in a gaggle when disturbed. They fly only a few inches off the water and crash land 40 to 50 yards away.
I love the name, though it seems more applicable to some of my former high school students than to these cute critters.
Yesterday was an excellent day for marine mammals. Unfortunately, the “catch of the day” by Randy Bush did not find its way to film or digital media …. but Randy did spot Orcas in the shipping lane on a line between Channel Islands Harbor and Prisoners anchorage.
We didn’t have a camera handy enough when we encountered white-sided dolphins. We don’t see these energetic and high-flying characters very often. This pic is from the Vancouver Aquarium which has a great tool for identifying marine mammals.
White-sided dolphins, known by the cognoscenti as LAGS, an abbreviation of their scientific genus Lagenorhynchus, are very acrobatic, though the small pod we saw yesterday was in fast, straight travel mode.
This is only the second time in six years of sailing the channel that I’ve identified these critters … and I’ve yet to see Orcas myself, though this is the second sighting this year by a friend.
Mai Tai ashore at northwest end of Channel Islands Harbor near the world-famous Rudder Room. Photo: Rob Walton
An evening sail turns into a nightmare for Mai Tai
It’s always easy to pass judgment when you’re viewing the wreckage the day after. Nice to look at it in the light of day and pontificate. And I’ve heard a lot of that (and done a fair amount myself), but as we used to say in Naval Aviation: There’s no point in having accidents if you don’t learn something from them.
Discounting, at least for the purposes of this discussion, the obvious preventatives – waiting until daylight so that he could see, or turning away from the beach when the depth gauge showed 15 feet or so, what are the other actions he could have taken?
Let’s just say that he had to come in that entrance and that he had to make the approach fairly close to the beach, how could he have set himself up better? How could he have used his GPS better? How might a hand-bearing compass have helped him out?
A quick aside – the captain did do some stuff right: He did deploy the anchor, but the rode parted; they did call in a Mayday; they were wearing life jackets and they successfully walked ashore.
We met a guy on the beach digging near the keel the day after the incident, who told us that the owner of the boat “sold” it to a passer-by, a guy simply walking the beach. Digging guy was walking guy’s friend. They were going to excavate before trying to tow it off the beach.
If the owner did actually unload the wreck and pass the pollution and clean-up responsibility to someone else, well that was one very excellent move.
There’s a bottle of champagne going to the best answer on how the captain might have prevented this accident by using a fundamental navigation techniques. Something you learned in ASA 105 or similar basic nav class.
Put your answer in the comment section below.
//
BTW – here’s the link to the Ventura County Star story. the story isn’t great, but the comments are fun.
The Brig Pilgrim is the setting for Richard Henry Dana's tale of California sea adventure in "Two Years Before the Mast."
Two Years Before the Mast
sat unread in the rail in the forepeak of Wiley for a dozen years. I don’t know where that book went. It may have turned to dust over the last decade of sailing, but I got interested in the book again a couple of weeks ago when I found it in the FREE listing in my Kindle.
And so I dived in again. My first attempt at the book got me not much further than page 50, but I’m just about done this time around and have found it fascinating.
It’s certainly an important book to anyone interested in California history and it’s a great place to come up with trivia to amaze and confuse even the MASTER RATER, THE RANGER and the other denizens of Channel Islands Harbor.
I can’t quite get my memory around this one, but I’m trying to memorize these lines. Don’t know when I’ll launch them, but there will be an appropriate time, possibly involving beer, to do that. Here it is – I think you have to yell this in a commanding tone, so I’ll be practicing that – the commanding tone – on the dogs:
Set up the lee rigging, fish the spritsail yard, lash the galley, and bring tackles upon the martingale. Bowse it; bowse it to windward, lads.
Other than lads and set up, I haven’t a clue what any of that means. But I do know what it means to face the Southeast storm that he talks about. Repeatedly.
After “doubling” The Horn, you’d think that weather wouldn’t be much of a bother to these seamen, but when they were in the Santa Barbara Channel in the fall they prepared for it every time they anchored. In fact, when anchoring in Santa Barbara, they’d set the hook three miles offshore at this time of year.
What’s more, they’d rig the anchor so that it could be jettisoned when the wind kicked up and backed to the Southeast.
My Santa Ana strategy is not quite so conservative. I am ready, however, to leave a stern anchor behind on a buoy if needs be. Nor do I snug in to a far western wall when in Pelican, Alberts or Willows as I would in summer. Plus we make more frequent weather checks than we do at other times of year, going on deck to check for eastern breeze, east or south swell or dry decks.
In an emergency, we’re ready to jettison both anchors, but unlike Pilgrim, we have a power windlass. But the biggest difference is that Pilgrim was a square rigger, capable of getting not much closer than about 70 degrees of apparent wind. They’d have to backwind headsails to fill the mains and topsails, so they needed plenty of room to the lee to make that maneuver. We, happily, have a mighty Yanmar, which we fire up at the first sign of easterly wind.
We were surprised (twice) by unforecast Santa Anas last year. Until then, we had great confidence in NOAA. If they don’t mention Santa Anas, you’re not necessarily safe. If they do forecast a Santa Ana …. they’re not often wrong. In either case, have a plan, brief your crew and check the weather throughout the night.
We visited a couple more of the Channel Islands – Catalina and Santa Barbara – both on the way out and on return. Catalina still leaves me cold. It has everything that Santa Cruz does, but it’s covered with people. I’m no misanthrope (someone who hates people, Randy), but they sure clutter the landscape.
Entering San Diego was very interesting. Though no carriers were underway in the harbor, there were plenty of warships on the radio. In fact, we got turned back when we wanted to circumnavigate Santa Barbara. That area wasn’t hot, but it was close to a firing range and it was too hard to explain we wouldn’t intrude. So we didn’t and just headed for Catalina.
The weather was dismal on the way down and we motored a great deal. The return leg got better and better with our final leg under blue skies with winds near 20 knots most of the way. It was beginning to feel like Southern California.
BTW – the Local Notice to Mariners that cites hovercraft operations near Camp Pendleton – well, there’s no real restriction, just an alert. We clocked one on MARPA at 40+
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Yesterday was an excellent day for marine mammals. Unfortunately, the “catch of the day” by Randy Bush did not find its way to film or digital media …. but Randy did spot Orcas in the shipping lane on a line between Channel Islands Harbor and Prisoners anchorage.
